Slice of Life

MIAMI (AP) — Students from Florida International University have been walking on water for a class assignment.

To do it, they wear water shoes that they created.

The students had to make it to the other side of a 175-foot lake on campus Thursday while wearing the aquatic shoes in order to earn an “A” on the assignment. Alex Quinones was the first to do so in just over a minute, earning himself $500 and major bragging rights.

A total of 79 students competed in the race.

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Architecture professor Jaime Canaves says the annual race is a lesson in in life as well as architecture. He says he wants to show his students that as long as they research and test their work, anything is possible — even “walking on water.”

Dangerous nap

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A man napping in a Montana cornfield was startled out of his snooze when he was run over by a large harvesting machine — and Yellowstone County deputies say he’s lucky to be alive.

Sheriff’s Lt. Kent O’Donnell says the 57-year-old man had been traveling the country by bus and decided to take a rest three rows deep in a field on the outskirts of Billings, the state’s largest city.

A farmer harvesting felt his combine hit something. When he turned the machine off, he heard screaming.

Emergency responders found the man’s clothing had been sucked into the cutter, ensnaring him in the blades.

O’Donnell says the man, whose name was not released, suffered cuts requiring stitches and may need skin grafts, but given the circumstances is “incredibly lucky.”

On the carpet

CASTLE SHANNON, Pa. (AP) — This deer wasn’t caught in the headlights. It was called on the carpet.

A Pittsburgh-area carpeting store has been cleaning up after the wild animal smashed into the store and ran amok.

Jill Horvatic, an employee of Stout Carpeting in Castle Shannon, tells WPXI-TV that she hid while the animal ran around, crashing into displays and damaging other items.

Horvatic says, “I was shaking. I haven’t felt like that ever in my life. For 20 minutes all I heard was banging and glass shattering. It was horrifying.”

Police were able to get the deer out of the store before anybody got hurt.

Voting spider

REHOBOTH, Mass. (AP) — It wasn’t hanging chads or voter fraud that delayed the vote count in one Massachusetts town — it was a spider.

She called a technician, who said a spider web apparently prevented the machine’s scanner from counting ballots. Conti tells The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro (http://bit.ly/XmzmSj ) all Rehoboth’s voting machines received preventive maintenance a month ago.